Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Dead Things

Wow, where have I been in the last, oh, 2 years? Yeah, that's like it.

This probably isn't news, considering it's been nearly four years, but the official Zoo Tycoon forums are shut down to posts. Zoo Tycoon Volcano still appears to be active (as of 4/18/2012, 5:45 PM EST, 9:45 PM UTC, nearly 40 users were online within the last 30 minutes).

Considering I have been uninterested in Zoo Tycoon for a very long period of time, my knowledge of recent events is currently limited. From what I can tell, Mysterious Map Marvels' forums still seem to be down.

MESSAGE ON FORUM:

Dear loyal fans,

Mysterious Map Marvels is busy working on a new project. Cretaceous Calamity is currently on hold. We will reopen our site when our current top secret project is revealed to the public. Until then, keep visiting, because it won't be much longer ;)

~Mysterious Map Marvels Staff

P. S.: JVM was here.
~JVM, 2/6/12

So MMM is still active, as of February 6, 2012 (If any MMM member, particularly JVM happens to stumble on my blog, please verify this). Aside from this so-called "top secret project," which has kept the forums shut down for a very long time to the point I don't believe it's real, Mysterious Map Marvels seems to be, in the modding world, dead.

Even this blog is on the verge of death. I don't say it was or it will die. All I know is that my Zoo Tycoon Blog is of uncertain fate. But there is hope.

Since this winter, I have been eagerly awaiting the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, which, needless to say, struck an iceberg and sank on the night of April 15th, 1912, killing over 1,500 people in the most famous oceanic disaster in history.

Now that the centennial is just about past, my interest in Titanic is temporarily fading, and may likely be replaced by my interests in Zoo Tycoon and Jurassic Park, reviving this and my other blog, Jurassic Park: Dinosaurs Revealed. The only thing conflicting with that is an interest in amusement parks. My school is going to Cedar Point Amusement Park a month from now, and I'm pretty much gearing up on it. But if I was interested in Star Wars, Titanic, and Cedar Point all at once, I can possibly squeeze ZT and JP in Titanic's place.

So you can expect (no promises) to see updates on JP:DR and The Gamer's Zoo Tycoon Blog in the future! (Here's one now - I'm changing this blog's name, but not URL, to that!)

One last thing: I have been on Internet Archive's WayBack Machine to the original Zoo Tycoon website. On my desktop, I have both Zoo Tycoon: Complete Collection and Zoo Tycoon 2: Ultimate Collection currently installed.

In case you never realized, the original Zoo Tycoon's way of making suitable exhibits is difficult. Believe me, I have tried making such an exhibit on extinct animals like the Giant Ground Sloth and Gallimimus with no reasonable success. Zoo Tycoon 2 fixed this...dilemma. Still, in a few ways (just a few ways), I have found the first more entertaining than the second. Example: When I got Complete Collection, animals that would otherwise have to be downloaded from the website were already on the game (the same has happened with Zoo Tycoon 2: Ultimate Collection). Such animals included unconfirmed animal species - Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster. But that's not the point. That's just one of my few ways.

Another one is that it's more challenging in some ways. I like to experiment with fence designs to hold in extinct animals in the first one, the second one had some fences of unrealistic strength. For example, you could hold in a Tyrannosaurus rex - which seems to be quite weaker than the real thing - with just standard zoo enclosure bar fences.

But as I said above, for some extinct animals - and possibly regular and marine animals as well - getting a good exhibit is quite...difficult. They may lose their temper and turn every piece of foliage into rubble, and that won't help you - or them - get a good exhibit at all. Thus, I need some sort of cheat sheet that was seemingly lost ever since Zoo Tycoon 2 came out and replaced the original's website. That's where the WayBack Machine comes into play.

I can get on the Zoo Tycoon website as it looked in 2004. I do this from the homepage:

Hints and Tips>Animal Care Overview>Zoo Tycoon or any expansion pack...Read More>Select any animal.

Now I can use this to guide me through!

That is all.

PS: All posts older than this one are now obsolete and expected to be ignored. I was...younger and less knowledgeable than I am now.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The Exotic Gamer's Other Blogs

See my description for my other blogs.

Area 51 Xpansion Team

This expansion team of mine is not in existance yet, but hopefully will in the next few years or so. When it does start though, it will exist for a little while in Zoo Tycoon Volcano, then beginning to merge into a website from the Volcano. By the time a lot of people get into it, the team will be fully independent from ZTV.

Want to learn more about Zoo Tycoon?

On your search engine, look up "Zoopedia," and then look for a link that says something similar to: "The Zoo Tycoon Wiki." However, the website has several incomplete articles. Occasaionally, I edit existing ones, and once, I created an article.

Followers

Blog Archive

About Me

My original screen name on here was simply, "The Gamer," however, I felt that I am not so worthy of this name. Since I am more a fan of games that your more everyday gamers who play games like Halo and Call of Duty usually overlook (particularly the older games), you can call me The Exotic Gamer from now on. (The name, "The Gamer" will continue to be used on my Virtual Sailor blog.) My favorite games include, but are not limited to (and are in no sort of order): Microsoft Flight Simulator X, the Zoo Tycoon series, the RollerCoaster Tycoon series, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, Virtual Sailor, Ship Simulator 2008, and Star Wars: Empire at War.